This engaging, collectible, miniature hardcover of the Orson Scott Card classic and worldwide bestselling novel, Ender's Game, makes an excellent gift for anyone's science fiction library."Ender's Game is an affecting novel."--New York Times Book ReviewOnce again, Earth is under attack. An alien species is poised for a final assault. The survival of humanity depends on a military genius who can defeat the aliens. But who?

Ender Wiggin. Brilliant. Ruthless. Cunning. A tactical and strategic master. And a child.

Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender's childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn't it?

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Top customer reviews

This was an ok book. For me it wasn't amazing or life changing but also wasn't a struggle to read.The book follows the child Ender who is being groomed to become to the world saviour in a war against Earths enemy, the Buggers. The problem is Ender is only 6 at the beginning of the book.

This is a hard book to really love, I feel, as the themes in raise some really hard questions for me. Is it acceptable to treat a child like this? Is it acceptable to sacrifice one for the sake of the world? Is war really the answer? How violent should children be allowed to become without censorship?

If the main characters in the book were older then I wouldn't have any quarms with this book at all. The action was great and at a good pace. The story built up well and the end had a few twists and turns to keep me guessing and interested. Saying that the borderline child abuse in this book really didn't do anything for me other than upset me and make me question a humanity that could agree and carry out the treatment that Ender received.

If you can not question themes and plots and just enjoy the story then this is a good book. But if, like me, books get you to thinking about the worlds and societies within them, this one will have you shaking your head and wishing you were not part of the same human race.

Good story, appealing to adults and intelligent older children. It is about the highly unusual education, through ‘games’ with a very serious purpose, of a boy known as ‘Ender’ (which is the nearest his little sister can pronounce to his real name ‘Andrew’), one of a group of children selected for their exceptional qualities, being tested and prepared to one day potentially command Earth’s space fleet against a hostile alien civilization.

Some of that sounds clichéd, but the way it is done, it is not. The ‘battle to save humanity as we know it’ aspect is the background that makes the story seem important, not the story itself. There is more than one surprise towards the end.

The author says in the preface that he has a post-graduate degree in literature and could have written in a ‘literary’ style with ‘themes’ if he wished. Instead, he uses language more simply as a means to get on with the story, not an end in itself, although there is an occasional memorable phrase e.g. ‘Ender’s anger was cold, so he could use it; Bozo’s anger was hot, so it used him.’

The name the American author gives in the book to the colony insect-like (or ‘bug-like’) aliens may cause British readers to blush; the word ‘Buggers’ evidently does not have the meaning in the USA that it does in Britain.

I understand there is a whole series of sequels, beginning with ‘Speaker for the Dead’ (which I tried but gave up on) but they are quite different kinds of story. Enders Game as a satisfying book by itself whether or not you read further.

I enjoyed Ender's Game a lot - it was nicely plotted, beautifully paced, and had a great sense of tension until the last events at Battle School kinda robbed it of what it had so painstakingly built earlier. In certain respects, it suffers from having been read so late in my life - elements of it that might have been shocking and original if I had read it earlier seem somewhat trite. It doesn't have the sweeping, deep ideas of House of Suns or any of the Culture novels,which makes it very much dependent on the novelty of the plot to capture the reader's attention. In some minor ways it hasn't dated especially well - it feels a bit 80s, if that makes any sense. It also comes across in some places as a look into the somewhat bigoted mind of the author. I'm all for separating the art from the artist, but that's hard to do when certain neanderthal views and rhetoric is slipped into the text.

But what it does have going for it is a lot - the characters, save for Peter and Valentine, come across as real individuals with complex motivations. The children don't come across *as* children, but that's okay since it seems to be a conscious decision to treat them that way and fits entirely into the whole concept of the book. The plot, which time has rendered cliche, is well constructed and expertly executed. The main themes of the book - for example, the role of duty and the burden of informed consent are explored with considerable finesse. The book is in some ways an extended allegory of the Nietzschen concept of the Ubermensch, but deconstructed and inverted. In Ender's game, the Ubermensch isn't a product of his own transcendence of moral and societal conventions, but a product of the explicit engineering of the context in which he lives. Thus, he is a mix of nature, nurture, and the power of social context. None would be as effective without the others. It also hearkens back to the 'Great Men' theory, and reconciles both the classical and modern interpretations - yes, only a truly great person can shape history, but they only become that way through the explicit building of competence by a society that needs them to function as a tool. No-one attains significance in a vacuum. The experiences of Ender have deep implications for those who want to muse on the story once they're finished reading it.

Like the best kind of 'young adult' literature, Ender's Game is literature first and 'young adult' second. It doesn't patronise the reader, and leaves the critical and important themes as subtext without feeling the need to grab anyone by the brain and yell 'These are the things about the book you should be finding important!'. It's very highly recommended, but the poorly executed ending robs it of a fifth star. Consider it a 4.5 star book.

I really loved this book, I bought it for my husband for Christmas and he was raving on about it so much that I gave it a read also.

It is a fascinating science fiction read, where the fate of the future is put in the hand of a super intelligent little boy. It is interesting the way you follow the main character- a little boy called Ender, through a few meagre years of military training in the form of games and sports while they groom him into their perfect weapon.

I read this book because it had great reviews but I'd already seen the film so I wasnt sure if that would spoil it. It was like reading silk, what a really well written novel! I've read so many books recently with obvious flaws, droops in the middle of the novel with too many characters and a lack of plot from preparing to milk a series dry, but this is just a lightning fast novel concentrating on essentially one character. Could read it in one sitting and would enjoy reading it again!